


hymns from another world

by with_the_monsters



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/pseuds/with_the_monsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Todd, Viola, and the rest of their lives to find in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hymns from another world

**Author's Note:**

> This is for violahewitt in the Chaos Walking Secret Santa 2012, albeit very late. She requested something Todd/Viola and full of feels, which I hope I've achieved. Happy Christmas, Amy!

Todd decides that four million suns and another million stars in a single sky is a good metaphor for love the exact minute he holds his daughter in his arms for the first time. She’s screaming awfully loudly and all sort of purple and red but there’s definitely not been a more beautiful creature in the whole universe, not ever, and the brightness of all those suns and stars would feel like this, he reckons. Overwhelming, exhausting, inescapable.

He can barely take his eyes off her, not even when the nurse tells him to pass her to Viola. Slowly, entranced, Todd stretches out his arms and hands his daughter over and feels a pinch in his heart and wonders if it’ll ever feel okay again to have his arms empty.

When he finally tears his eyes away, he sees that Viola is crying. This is so unexpected that he can’t even move for a solid few seconds, and then horror launches him forwards, hands ghosting all across her, fingertips at the tear tracks on her cheeks, and all he can say is, “Viola? Viola!”

“Stop it, Todd,” she tells him with the quietest, the tiredest of laughs, her free hand going up to catch at his and hold it away from her tears, “I’m _happy_. I’m happy.”

“Oh,” is the only reply he can dredge up, and then Viola’s laughing harder, arms around their baby to hold her still despite her shaking chest, and in the depths of Todd’s confusion Viola’s fingers find his cheek and come away wet. “Oh,” Todd says again, and Viola can barely stop laughing for long enough to kiss him.

x

They have a brief and serious fight about a name for their baby. Viola is pressing for Maddy, for her dear dead friend, but Todd can’t stand the idea of naming a baby after somebody who’s died already.

“She’s gotta have a _new_ name,” he insists, tone hushed to prevent the sleeping nameless baby from waking, “One that’s all hers and just hers and nobody else’s. _Please_ , Viola. One just for her, not one someone else used already.”

Viola presses her lips together and turns her head away towards the child. There is a brief, awful silence between them, and Todd can feel the hurt in his heart because all this time, this whole goddamn time, they have never quite fought like this. But then Viola’s face comes away smiling, something switched, and Todd breathes out hard through his nose and she whispers, “Okay.”

x

A few nights later Todd is sprawled on the sofa in their house with Viola comfortable against him and Mary in her arms, burbling contentedly at them both. Todd is smiling so hard it feels like his face is going to fall in two and Viola is near to happy-crying again, her hand on Todd’s knee, her arm around their baby, peace so soft in her heart you’d believe she’d never be unhappy again.

She is unhappy, though, not long later. “Post-partum depression,” the doctor tells Todd – the new one, who came over with the latest settlers. Todd cradles Mary uneasily as Viola sits and stares vacantly out of the window, unseeing, and though the doctor insists Viola will be fine before too long and presses a bottle of pills on Todd to help out, he can’t help fearing that soon he’s going to wake up and she’ll be gone and he’ll have lost her. And he can’t do that, not effing close to it, not after everything that happened before.

“We’ll be fine,” he tells Viola firmly when the doctor’s gone, closing his hand around hers, begging with every part of him but his voice for her to come back to him, “I’ll look after Mary, yer gonna get better, it’s all fine. Viola. It’s fine, right?”

She doesn’t answer and Todd wonders what he’ll do if she never answers again. It’s like dying another death, sitting there next to her feeling like she’s not even there at all. He spends what feels like hours just talking to her, at her, until Mary starts to cry and he has to go away and take her to the lady next door who’s got her own baby, the one who’s offered to feed Mary until Viola is better. She reassures Todd and coos over Mary but Todd can’t focus. There’s just Viola and her not being there and it scares him so much his hands are shaking by the time he gets Mary back.

x

The coldness lasts three weeks and Todd is near to suicidal panic, pouring love and attention into Mary to distract himself from the vacancy in Viola’s face. Without his child in his arms he feels like he might just float away to find Viola wherever she’s gone, so most nights he sits in his mother’s old rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom and falls asleep with Mary held safe against him, waking at every movement from the bed from where Viola will not move or from the child in his arms.

Then, thank god, thank gods, whoever might be up there, one morning he wakes up to cold fingers on his cheek and starts so violently he wakes the sleeping baby.

“I’m so sorry, Todd,” Viola says in hoarse tones over Mary’s crying, “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

“Yer back,” is the only reply Todd can give, shifting their daughter into one arm to raise his hand to Viola, checking she’s not just a dream, “Yer back.”

Viola clasps his hand to her cheek and nods, looking so sad and so sorry that Todd doesn’t even think before moving his hand to the back of her head and drawing her down to kiss, long and loving and just a little desperate. When she pulls her head back, he doesn’t even know whose tears are on his cheeks.

“Missed you,” he tells her quietly, and she gives him another sorry smile and then lifts Mary from his arms without another word, cuddling her close like she wants to make up for all the lost days in the next few seconds.

x

And then Mary turns one and two and three, and all of a sudden the days are rushing past Todd so fast he can barely catch his breath. For her fourth birthday, they give her a baby brother. Viola wins the argument this time, and when Todd hands baby Cillian over to Ben so his granddaddy can get a good old look at him, he thinks that he’s not sorry he gave in to Viola this time, not now he’s seen that look on Ben’s face.

Two years, another baby, and then another the year after, and Viola’s laughing the night they get back from hospital with newborn Sarah in her arms and wriggling Isaac in Todd’s, Cillian’s fist bunched in his daddy’s hem and Mary watching it all like she’s all of their mothers, this funny knowing little look on her face.

“I think that’s enough,” Viola says through her laughter when Todd asks her what’s so funny. “Remember when we barely could keep ourselves alive? Now there’s six of us and not a jot of spare space.”

“There’s a bit of space,” Todd replies slyly, giving Mary this little nod. Viola watches with suspicious eyes as Mary beams and shoots out of the room, Todd dandling Isaac in his arms as they both wait for her to return. Todd can tell that Viola is just _dying_ to know what he and Mary have been plotting, but the surprise is just too good to ruin it.

Viola’s face when Mary explodes back into the room with the puppy in tow is a right picture, and Todd laughs so hard Cillian catches on and giggles too, and Isaac in his arms grumbles in complaint at his daddy’s shaking arms.

“You’re _mad_ ,” Viola exclaims as soon as she’s caught her breath, arms around Sarah like she needs to protect her, “A puppy _and_ a new baby? And three other kids?”

Mary’s eyes are round and wide like saucers as her gaze dives between her parents, and Todd can practically _see_ her trembling with anxiety that Viola won’t let the dog stay. He extends an arm towards her as he sits himself down, scooping her up and perching her on one knee with Isaac on the other, Cillian tugging at all the bits of him that are loose to be allowed up too.

With all three children somehow in his lap, Todd looks at Viola and Viola looks at him and this little smile starts in the corners of her mouth and she says, carefully, consideringly, shifting Sarah in her arms, “Well, we _did_ save the world once. So maybe a puppy isn’t that much of a challenge, all things considered.”

Mary screams so loudly in excitement that she jolts Sarah into wakefulness, and it takes Todd yelling over the din to get everybody to calm down.

“Be quiet, will ya! Your mother needs to name her.” Isaac and Mary cease bouncing around with the puppy to turn and stare expectantly at their mother, Cillian still in Todd’s lap clutching his daddy’s wrist tight as he waits too.

Viola looks between all four of them and, with another little smile, one that Todd knows as familiarly as his own two hands and loves more dearly than anything else, she says, “I was thinking – what do you all think of Terra?”

There is silence from the other side of the room as the children and their father think it over, and then all eyes turn to Todd as he replies, “Ain’t that Earth? Another name for it, I mean.”

“Isn’t,” Viola corrects automatically, and then that little smile stretches out into a full one, so bright Todd almost can’t cope, “I just think it’s right. Appropriate, if you like. Your father and I have all our suns and stars right here,” she continues, looking between her children, still smiling like she couldn’t love anything more than she loves them, “So why not the Earth as well?”

Mary and Isaac clap their hands in approval and start shouting the puppy’s name, Cillian in Todd’s lap repeating it in a lower tone, trying out how his mouth feels around the word. And Todd just looks over at his wife, and thinks that the sky’s got more suns than ever, and he wouldn’t lose any of this for anything at all, not for the first Cillian back, nor his parents or Manchee or Davy or any of them. This, forever, this is the best thing there is.


End file.
